….Humidity, torrential rain & missing curfew….
Rainy season in Madagascar
So….weeks 5 & 6 were spent mostly on deck 3 [the hospital] with the occasional day trip off the ship. Things are starting to fall into a slight routine, although I’m not getting too comfortable as all this will change once we open the hospital.
Sunday I was invited to accompany one of the families I babysit for into town for lunch. Having the Ship Security Officer [SSO] with me meant I felt safe enough to take my camera. Unfortunately, when I pull out my camera, I can easily lose my ability to keep an eye on my surroundings, so was very grateful for the patience shown every time I stopped to capture something.
It’s fascinating to me, speaking to others on the ship, that I can walk down a street and find beauty and colour, while others walk the same streets and only notice the dirt and poverty. Hopefully my photos allow you to see Madagascar the way I do.
I must confess though that the humidity is a struggle. At some point I hope my Irish complexion and sweat glands start to love Africa as much as I do! It’s certainly a 2 outfit per day country. If it isn’t the sweat, it’s the rain! You really do have to just accept that you will be wet either way! And you can’t let either keep you from exploring.
On the Monday I woke to the news that a very dear friend had lost her Mum after a very short battle with cancer. One of the Chaplains on the ship mentioned a section of a book “A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss by Jerry Sittser” that really stuck with me. The book is about the loss of his wife, daughter, and mother in a tragic accident. There’s a line in the book where his sister tells him “That the quickest way for anyone to reach the sun and the light of day is not to run west, chasing after the setting sun, but to head east, plunging into the darkness until one comes to the sunrise.”
It’s tough being so far away and not being able to do anything!
Thursdays are fire drill day. Now we are in port, we all evacuate to the dock and hope that it’s not too long before being allowed back inside. In week 6, our very kind Captain decided to not make us leave the ship due to the rain. It was very nice not having to change clothes afterwards!
Saturday, at the end of week 5, included a “walk” to the 4-star hotel “The Calypso”, it really was like a mirage appearing out of the heat haze. One of the nurses and I enjoyed lunch, a swim and even a massage in air conditioning! What a treat! So glad I moved some savings to my Wise card.
The rain in week 6 has been a sight to behold. One crew member came back from town stating, “there was so much water that the tuk tuks were floating away!”
On Valentine’s Day the ship hosted a party for crew members, it included a performance by the choir, wedding photos from couples on the ship, trivia [my team won by 1 point!!] and the shoe game. The game, if you aren’t familiar, calls for couples to sit back-to-back [ours included 6 couples, ranging from married one year to thirty something] multiple questions are asked about their relationship, and you hold up the shoe of the person it most relates to. The most entertaining part of the game though was watching the kids of some of the couples very vocally either completely agreeing with their answers or wholeheartedly disagreeing. One very sweet kid started getting very concerned when his parents kept disagreeing on the answer.
Friday night, week 6, I went to dinner with two crew mates. We had decided to go to a place close to the port gate so we wouldn’t miss curfew [21:00], very responsible of us I know! Unfortunately, after taking a while to be served, we found ourselves closer to curfew than planned. Right as we were leaving, the heavens also chose that moment to open again. For the preservation of my Birkenstocks, I decided to remove them while traversing the puddles surrounding the restaurant. It was at this point that I realized that I was never going to have enough hands to carry my shoes, hold my pants up out of the puddles, hold my ice cream [in a cup] AND my umbrella all the same time. Whilst I certainly gave it a good crack I failed miserably! One of my crewmates offered to hold the umbrella so I could at least finish my ice cream, but after losing some of it into one of my shoes and my pant legs went for a dunking into a well-placed puddle, I gave up!! We must have looked quite the sight, 3 soaked women running [2 of us barefoot] through the port, trying to make it back to the ship not too much past curfew. It’s a good thing our Gurkhas and the SSO are used to seeing soaked crew mates hauling themselves up the gangplank!
On a serious note, I have found myself reflecting, over the past couple of weeks, on my decision to come to this ship. You know how you get a line of a song stuck in your head, that no matter what you do, you can’t seem to get it to leave? Well, I’ve had a line from the song “His eye is on the sparrow”. The last time I had that exact line stuck in my head was when I was 18 and working at a summer camp in the USA. A pivotal part of my time there was meeting a woman who would become a lifelong friend. Heather and I were inseparable from the moment we met! [Could we talk! about anything and everything – this never changed even as we got older!!] This song became our anthem that summer, especially the line “I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free!” I guess you could say things are going well if the line repeating in my head is I’m happy and free!
I carry her picture with me everywhere I go, as tragically, in 2018 we lost my beautiful friend to cancer. Currently it’s on the wall near my head where I sleep. I know this will sound crazy, but I have never felt her with me as much as I can here on this ship. She used to call me one of her “God winks” and I used to laugh at her, now I think maybe she’s mine!
Heather & I at 18
Observations from week 5&6:
Homemade chocolate cookies are a perfectly acceptable payment for babysitting!!
The saying “we get along like a house on fire” is confusing to Americans.
A shower isn’t complete onboard unless the shower curtain has spent more than half of the allocated 2 minutes stuck to your body!
My confession of the week – in desperation, after a night of only 3 hours, I did ask the barista how many shots he could legally put in my coffee!
Malarone dreams are a thing! Notable dreams so far have been….the ship has been taken hostage by ISIS, I’ve been on a sinking yacht, owned a zoo and I tried desperately to leave the ship and was stopped by the SSO. Haha someone asked if I needed to speak to the Chaplain! A crew nurse, however, has found them vastly entertaining and is upset when I don’t have a new dream to report at breakfast!
This ship wouldn’t be the same without the kids! They are so entertaining!